


an invisible disaster

by metonymy



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-23
Updated: 2012-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-31 15:20:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/pseuds/metonymy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ariadne tries to move on after Arthur leaves her for Eames. He has slightly less success.</p>
            </blockquote>





	an invisible disaster

After it's over, after he leaves and her possessions slowly take back the space she'd cleared in her small apartment, after she goes through the whole stupid cycle of crying and moaning and drinking entirely too much red wine and sobbing on her friends' shoulders, she keeps dreaming. Because what else can she do? The community isn't that large, of course, and it's inevitable that she'll hear about him - about _them_ \- but she can't give it up just because someone broke her heart. She works on commission and buys her own PASIV and only occasionally does jobs, tucking the rest of the money away while she finishes school. She flies under the radar as dreamsharing goes public and the world convulses and tries to figure out what to do with this new technology. She somehow develops her own specialty of consulting architecture and dreamshare security, building one-off levels for the dreamers who militarize the minds of the susceptible and constructing mental fortresses for the clients who have something to hide.

Arthur would hate it, she thinks, and it almost doesn't hurt.

Her passport fills up with stamps and she begins to build a name for herself. The apartment in Paris grows dusty. She doesn't see people for more than a couple of weeks at a time; all her relationships are carried on over the phone or by email or by letter. She visits people. She meets a lot of other dreamers but doesn't cross paths with either of them. And that's fine.

She's almost forgotten about the whole thing when she gets a call from Dom. She can hear the kids screaming in the background, happy shouts that make her smile.

"Arthur was talking about you," he says, and she can feel her face smooth out like a blank wall. The point man taught her that, she remembers.

"Why?" Her voice doesn't even shake. And she can't think of a single reason why he would.

Dom clears his throat. "He asked how I... dealt with Mal. I said it was mostly you and he... well, he said that wasn't really an option in this case."

She tries to picture that: a hollow-eyed shade bearing her face and burning with anger, an emotion she doesn't even really feel anymore. Not that she feels a great deal these days beyond, oh, professional satisfaction or simple fatigue or the fleeting pleasures of nice weather and good food.

"So?" she asks. And a very small part of her feels the mean smug pleasure of withholding, of revenge. Let him be haunted, she thinks, let him feel the weight of what he did to her and the guilt prick him every time.

Dom coughs again, and it sounds like it's hiding a laugh. "I didn't tell him to contact you. He made his own bed, he can lie in it." With Eames, he doesn't say. But really, generating a shade because you dumped someone for another man, for someone you've been in love with the whole time - to Dom it must seem unbelievably petty, a joke beside the anguish he went through. No wonder he's laughing.

"So how did Phillipa's science fair go?" she asks, and they move on. She deliberately doesn't let herself think about it afterwards, catching her thoughts every time they try to drift towards the point man and how he must be suffering or the forger whose friendship she lost and whose consolation must not be helping. That would be small and petty, and she can't afford that in her life. Things are fine.

They're not fine when she sees them a month later, waiting in the lobby in her hotel in Vancouver. Her hair is misted with raindrops from the foggy drizzle outside and she knows she's red-cheeked and breathless as she runs in, and there they are, looking scarcely different than the last time she saw them, and they both stand and she stops.

"What are you doing here," she says, and it's not really a question, it's what's expected. They're both looking at her soberly, Arthur's face as empty as a skull and Eames hiding all his humor and spark, and she wants to run.

"I'm here to apologize," Arthur says, and that's it, that's the mortar shell it takes to break the walls, and she can feel her face contorting.

"So you can get rid of your shade?" she asks. He nods without hesitating. At least he's honest about it. "You came all the way here, tracked me down and waited for me, so I can be the tool for your emotional catharsis because you feel _bad_ about _dumping_ me?" The words fling themselves out but she can't tell whether they've hit their target, and Eames puts his hand on Arthur's shoulder and she wants to throw up on his perfectly shined shoes. She starts walking past them to the elevator and Arthur reaches for her and starts to say something and she shakes her head. "This isn't a fucking twelve-step program, Arthur. You said you were sorry when you left." Maybe this is petty, maybe she should try to be the bigger person, but she's suddenly furious. He's only here because it affects him, because he can't work. Otherwise, she imagines, he would never have spoken to her again.

"I was. I am sorry," he says, face still smooth. If he would at least look like he felt what he was saying she might hate him less.

"Act like you mean it," she tells him, and heads past them to the elevators. As the doors close in front of her face she can see Eames putting his arms around Arthur and the point man's head bowing towards the other man's shoulder, and maybe he does regret what happened, but maybe he should never have taken up with her in the first place.

Ariadne lies awake and watches the light chase patterns over the walls and does not cry.


End file.
